Friday, February 27, 2004

Those of you fortunate enough to be using a current browser (Gecko or WinIE6) can see publishing dates of news feeds for some sites I've linked to in my bookmarks. If you know of a site I've linked to that has a news feed you can't see there - tell me, and I'll add it (MovableType users - you're supposed to be smart enough to figure it out yourselves. Blogger users - enable ATOM in your settings. LJ users - I haven't got a clue. ETA: LJ has atom feeds too).

This news aggregation capability (well, actually, it doesn't do anything with the news items themselves, just their publishing date, but that's irrelevant) came at a very high cost of your trully's sweat, blood and tears - use it wisely.

Secure browser users (I mean Gecko-based Firefox, Mozilla & Netscape): you must enable Codebase Principals for the feature to work. This allows the browser to ask you if you want to let my script perform some tasks through your browser. Yes, it doesn't make your browser accept insecure scripts, it just makes it ask the user whether you want to allow something, for each and every action, every single time it tries to perform it (thankfully, there is a "remember this setting" option). What this particular script does is asking the browser to contact a site you did not browse to (a bookmark's news feed) - for some reason, deemed a restricted action.
Anyway, go to "about:config" (a pretty nifty page) and seek "signed.applets.codebase_principal_support" (there is a search option at the top). There, make the value "true". Reload this page, answer "yes". Enjoy. :)

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Have you ever had this feeling when a piece of the puzzle that is pop culture you've been missing suddenly fits in? Anyway, I'm watching When Harry Met Sally and all the references are coming back to me.
Still no progress on the remote xml loading front.

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

I've been working on feed integration for the bookmarks but I've encountered some of Mozilla's shortbacks - namely ridiculous security restrictions and bugs in the more esoteric features. You have to enable a security-loosening feature in a hidden setting to make the code run at all, and then it doesn't really work, with weird results. Runs smoothly on WinIE6 though. :-(
(You can't see it because I haven't published it yet)
Have found out page doesn't work well on IE5.0.
How do people who have net access at their workstations get any work done? I'm in training this week and since the training company is completely civilian they have net access. I've been reading blogs all day instead of practicing Oracle Database Administration...

Saturday, February 14, 2004

I have been called "gay" (used as a derisive term) for watching this show, but it is special to me and is actually a pretty good teen drama. I'm not yet too old to be in its target audience, and it's not like I'm more experienced than I was at 16 when I first watched it (tsk, tsk - ed). Those are great characters, long words that make me feel intellectual (wasn't there a quote saying an intellectual is a person who can go for two hours without thinking about sex? If that's true, all pseudo-intellectual teens are kidding themselves) and really pretty girls ("Katie Holmes or Michelle Williams?" is one of the toughest questions I was ever asked, and that includes the linear algebra course final).

Sunday, February 08, 2004

People, if I don't get bug reports, the bugs will never be fixed. I've just found out the thing doesn't work in WinIE6 and that is the most popular browser on the net. I will fix it later this week, but without some kind of feedback - I really won't be motivated enough to keep trying.
Building this site is therapeutic, not just wasting my time, so if you care for my mental health - keep me coding. I get depressed when I'm not succeeding in doing something productive so I must manufacture successful tasks for myself and they must be difficult enough to feel real and interesting enough to keep me going when the going gets tough. *rises from couch*